It’s the beauty of David Eugene Edwards’ songs that you can listen to a track like “Kicking Bird” from his riveting new LP, “Ten Stones,” and hear influences as vast as tribal house and industrial music. Of course, “Kicking Bird” isn’t a postmodern folk approach to industrial music or tribal-house beats.
It’s slightly simpler than that.
“That song is a Native American chant from the view of the horse — put to music, of course,” Edwards told The Denver Post. “My guitarist, Peter van Laerhoven, came up with the riff, and he plays that while I give it the drone, all that hurdy-gurdy behind it.”
Then again, nothing is that simple with Edwards and his Colorado- based band Wovenhand. Give “Kicking Bird” a second listen. (Hear it for free at .) Maybe that is industrial-styled percussion backing the horse’s chants.
“Well, I’ve always loved Einstuer- zende Neubauten,” Edwards admits, speaking of the seminal German industrial group, “and they’ve always been a huge influence for me.”
That’s a part of the mix, but it’s only the tip of the ingredient list for Edwards, one of the most respected and harrowing songwriters ever to come out of Colorado. Edwards’ post-16 Horsepower band Wovenhand plays tonight at the Mercury Cafe before leaving for an intense, month-long European tour, but we talked with him beforehand to catch up on the new record, the new approach and the new secular indie- rock audience.
Question: What have you been up to the in the past few years?
Answer: For the most part, just touring. We spend four months out of the year in Europe, basically touring. We toured quite a bit for “Mosaic,” and that lasted quite a while. We did two tours in America, but most of our time was spent in Europe, and then we started to write for “Ten Stones.”
Q: Did you record the record with local engineer Bob Ferbrache again?
A: No, it was a bit different this time. Usually I record here in town with Bob at Absinthe Studios, and I’ve been working with him for years and years, and he’s great, but Daniel Smith of my record company has been bugging me for a long time to go out there and record with him, and so that’s what I did.
Q: Any changes in how you recorded it?
A: We recorded a lot of the songs that we had been performing already, fleshing them out, and we recorded the album live to tape and tried to, in a sense, re-create what we’ve been doing live.
Q: And how does that differ from your past recordings?
A: Previously we’ve tracked everything out. I’ve tried to do almost everything myself, just for the fun of it. I enjoy the recording process, and I’m not afraid to experiment and try a million different things and enjoy it. This process, we were going to tape, and you don’t have as much time to make as many mistakes and erase them. We had to be prepared and more normal, and we did it live with the band I’ve been playing with the last few years.
Q: What does “Ten Stones” mean to you as an artist?
A: It’s quite different than the previous records. And it goes in a lot of different directions. I think that’s because I’m fairly neurotic musically. One day I’m listening to soft folk, and the next it’s High on Fire. I go back and forth and back and forth, and this record is a big mix of all my moods.
Q: Interesting. In parts, it seems to me that this record is harder or more percussive than your previous records. Does that make sense?
A: Absolutely. It was a lot more rhythm-oriented in general, and it was based on a heavy Native American influence as far as the rhythm goes. We explored that in a lot of different ways. When we play live, it’s a lot heavier and more aggressive than it is on record. I’ve always liked that, but people are always saying, ‘I wish we had a record that sounded like this live show,’ but I’m not a fan of live records. So I wanted to do something in the studio that sounded live.
Q: Was that ever a conscious decision? Quiet records, raucous live shows?
A: It’s just always been that way — with the adrenaline of the moment, the crowd being there and that interaction between the audience and the band. It brings that out in me. It’s hard for me to be calm live.
Q: You’re still doing really well in Europe, but I know the numbers aren’t nearly as solid in America. Do you still like touring North America?
A: I love to tour in America, I really do. We do it as often as we can, but the reasons we can’t are primarily financial. If I’m going to be away from home for three weeks, I have to make enough money to support my family. But it got to the point where we were knocking our heads against the wall. Like so many others, we did great on the coasts, and some in the Midwest, but the rest of the country can be difficult.
Q: How much bigger is your fan base in Europe?A: Our fan base is triple the size there. That’s not the reason I go there necessarily.
Q: Tell me about the website that is prominently displayed on your MySpace page: Living God Ministries?
A: It’s the church I go to. It’s just basically something I hope people will be interested in. I don’t have a connection to them, other than I go there and get great teaching. He is based in Colorado Springs, but he has a few different places where he teaches, and I go here in Denver.
Q: You’ve never shied away from writing about your religious faith. I’m curious if you’d agree with the sentiment that religious tones in music have become more accepted in the secular indie rock circuit?
A: There are a lot of bands that call themselves Christian bands, and they come out of that world. They play churches or they play this and that, and they work their way into the secular world. That’s always been something completely foreign to me.
I started in the Lion’s Lair. I consider myself a musician who believes what I believe, and I play where music is played. But with rock ‘n’ roll and punk rock, all this stuff in the past has been considered anti-religion and anti-everything, so it made sense that people would resist a Christian group playing in their nightclub. I understand the resistance.
At the same time, the whole idea of indie rock is people doing whatever they want, and that’s it: They make whatever kind of music they want as poorly as they want in any way they want. So to exclude someone because of what they believe is outside that. Indie music is different than punk rock in that respect.
Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394 or rbaca@denverpost.com
